Gral.

Mariano Escobedo

Homework: History of the Halloween

Name of the students: Lenhin Jose Luis Flores Rivera.

Christopher Rogelio Garcia Garza.

Angel Gabriel Damian Ramirez.

Name of the teacher: Lic. Mayra Cerda Arriaga.

Cluster: 1B.

Tuiton: 302210456

302210358

302210295
 INDEX:

 Ancient Origin of the Halloween.

 Ancient Origins of Halloween
 All Saints' Day
 Halloween Comes to America
 Ancient Origins of Halloween
Halloween’s origins date back to the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain (pronounced
sow-in). The Celts, who lived 2,000 years ago, mostly in the area that is now Ireland,
the United Kingdom and northern France, celebrated their new year on November 1.

This day marked the end of summer and the harvest and the beginning of the dark, cold
winter, a time of year that was often associated with human death. Celts believed that
on the night before the new year, the boundary between the worlds of the living and the
dead became blurred. On the night of October 31 they celebrated Samhain, when it was
believed that the ghosts of the dead returned to earth.

In addition to causing trouble and damaging crops, Celts thought that

the presence of the otherworldly spirits made it easier for the Druids, or
Celtic priests, to make predictions about the future. For a people
entirely dependent on the volatile natural world, these prophecies were
an important source of comfort during the long, dark winter.

To commemorate the event, Druids built huge sacred bonfires, where

the people gathered to burn crops and animals as sacrifices to the
Celtic deities. During the celebration, the Celts wore costumes,
typically consisting of animal heads and skins, and attempted to tell
each other’s fortunes.

When the celebration was over, they re-lit their hearth fires, which they
had extinguished earlier that evening, from the sacred bonfire to help
protect them during the coming winter.

By 43 A.D., the Roman Empire  had conquered the majority of Celtic

territory. In the course of the 400 years that they ruled the Celtic lands,
two festivals of Roman origin were combined with the traditional Celtic
celebration of Samhain.

The first was Feralia, a day in late October when the Romans
traditionally commemorated the passing of the dead. The second was a
day to honor Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruit and trees. The
symbol of Pomona is the apple, and the incorporation of this
celebration into Samhain probably explains the tradition of bobbing for
apples that is practiced today on Halloween .
 All Saints' Day
On May 13, 609 A.D., Pope Boniface IV dedicated the Pantheon in Rome in honor of all
Christian martyrs, and the Catholic feast of All Martyrs Day was established in the Western
church. Pope Gregory III later expanded the festival to include all saints as well as all
martyrs, and moved the observance from May 13 to November 1.

By the 9th century, the influence of Christianity had spread into Celtic lands, where it
gradually blended with and supplanted older Celtic rites. In 1000 A.D., the church made
November 2 All Souls’ Day, a day to honor the dead. It’s widely believed today that the
church was attempting to replace the Celtic festival of the dead with a related, church-
sanctioned holiday.

All Souls’ Day was celebrated similarly to Samhain, with big bonfires, parades and dressing
up in costumes as saints, angels and devils. The All Saints’ Day celebration was also called
All-hallows or All-hallowmas (from Middle English Alholowmesse meaning All Saints’ Day)
and the night before it, the traditional night of Samhain in the Celtic religion, began to be
called All-Hallows Eve and, eventually, Halloween.
 Halloween Comes to America
The celebration of Halloween was extremely limited in colonial New England because of
the rigid Protestant belief systems there. Halloween was much more common in
Maryland and the southern colonies.

As the beliefs and customs of different European ethnic groups and the American
Indians meshed, a distinctly American version of Halloween began to emerge. The first
celebrations included “play parties,” which were public events held to celebrate the
harvest. Neighbors would share stories of the dead, tell each other’s fortunes, dance
and sing.

Colonial Halloween festivities also featured the telling of ghost stories and mischief-
making of all kinds. By the middle of the 19th century, annual autumn festivities were
common, but Halloween was not yet celebrated everywhere in the country.

In the second half of the 19th century, America was flooded with new immigrants. These
new immigrants, especially the millions of Irish fleeing the Irish Potato Famine, helped
to popularize the celebration of Halloween nationally.